Soldiers face terror charges over neo-Nazis probe
JODY HARRISON
They are thought to serve with the Royal Anglian Regiment and Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers and were arrested following an “intelligence-led” operation by West Midlands Police.
Mr Deakin is also charged with possession of documents likely to be useful to a person preparing to commit an act of terrorism, and distribution of a terrorist publication.
He faces a separate charge of inciting racial hatred, including concerning National Action stickers posted at Aston University campus in Birmingham in July last year.
Mr Vehvilainen is charged with possessing a document containing information likely to be useful for terrorism, publishing material that is threatening, abusive or insulting, posting comments on a website intending to stir up racial hatred, and possessing pepper spray.
He is thought to be a PE instructor at the Infantry Battle School at Sennybridge and reportedly may have met on a course the others who have been charged.
Police said: “The arrests were pre-planned and intelligence-led and there was no risk to the public’s safety.”
A man from Northampton and another from Ipswich, both aged 24, were released without charge on Saturday.
National Action, described by the Home Office as “virulently racist, anti-Semitic and homophobic”, became the first extreme right-wing group to be banned under terrorism laws in December.
A Twitter acount purportedly run by the group posted messages online about the murder of Labour MP Jo Cox, who was stabbed and shot by Scots-born extremist Thomas Mair in June last year. One such tweet said there were “only 649 MPs to go”.
Others read: “Our thoughts go out to Thomas Mair” and “Don’t let this man’s sacrifice go in vain. #JoCox would have filled Yorkshire with more subhumans.”
Mair was jailed for a whole life sentence for what Mrs Cox’s widower Brendan branded “a political act and an act of terrorism”.
“Death to traitors, freedom for Britain”, which was said by Mair at his trial, appears alongside the listing for National Action’s website on Google and there have been increasing fears of a terror threat from the extreme right.